“... the teller is as important as the tale, there is no advantage to withholding information about the means by which the narrator arrived at the story, or why he cares. Knowing that every description of Pinto’s thoughts is derived from Rahela’s account of her conversations with him makes a difference. It goes some way to explaining the caricatural nostalgia ...”

“... his lodge. The club, a body turned in on itself and having its own particular rules, provided a means of cementing a society divided by the rage of party. Is it too fanciful to see Mr Spectator’s Club as a model for Masonry? Addison, a staunch Whig, showed how shared conviviality – tempered at times with a mild raillery – could bind such opposites as ...”

“... Hall in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. (1819-20). Irving’s was the first, and by no means the last, American contribution to the idealisation of the English country house. He tells us that the architecture and furnishings of Bracebridge Hall had not been altered since the Restoration and that its owner regretted that he had not been born two ...”

“... patrician of next-century information capitalism, Gates has been talking to everyone, including David Letterman, about what the future – guided by Microsoft, its controlling partner – has in store. With his transformation into a Third Wave Pollyanna, Chairman Bill is sounding remarkably like Speaker Newt, and his new book The Road Ahead has much in ...”

“... Clennell Wilkinson, the pompous and plagiaristic Ellis Roberts. And there were writers who, like David Garnett, simply couldn’t manage the world of journalistic deadlines. Today, leftish journals face an ever-widening gulf between the concerns of ‘cultural politics’ and the day-to-day agenda of professional politicians, which remains overwhelmingly ...”

“... came to Ethiopia in 1769 to look for the source of the Nile and took away with him the Songs of David, Kibre Negest (‘Glory of the Kings’) and the Book of Enoch, which he no doubt considered as souvenirs or going-home presents to himself. As well as being a sacred artefact, the Kibre Negest relates much of Ethiopia’s early history. It was returned to ...”

“... might have added, we allow Eros its momentary triumph over Thanatos. But since the death wish means that we are gratified by destruction in real life, the enjoyment we gain from horror stories is also a heightened version of how we react to real-life alarms. Like the Freudian unconscious, Gothic is at once intense and mechanical, a realm of noble passion ...”

“... verse was much more than this. It was a rich political resource. Neo-Latin panegyrics were a good means of winning friends and pleasing princes. Latin verse was also the perfect medium for humanist poets who wished to go beyond the parochial constraints of national politics to address a wider audience of freer thinking international readers. Thomas More’s ...”

“... of the whole enterprise: the recasting of the system of roads and thoroughfares. Efficient means of transport, both to and from and within the city was the founding principle of the grands travaux. The original idea was to link the railway stations, both with each other and with the city centre. Contemporary Paris was to be first and foremost a ...”

“... for a man who had to make a living, there was no reason for ‘travelled people of independent means’ to ‘remain there for more than a week’. Consequently, his son was educated at Eton and New College but did not then go to South Africa. Apart from Brand, Astor was the only member of the group who often exercised good judgment; he did not display it ...”

“... that such attacks have done the Government any electoral good at all. To spend more, of course, means to tax more. As with spending, there have been surreptitious (or, like increases in petrol tax, would-be surreptitious) increases in taxation; but underspending can probably only be corrected, given the Government’s reluctance to borrow more, by increases ...”

“... programme of middle-income housing just as the federal government was promoting suburbanisation by means of home loans, highway construction and mortgage insurance, and in the two decades after 1945 unions built nearly 40,000 co-operative apartments. Central to this postwar Popular Front culture was the Communist Party, a significant presence in the city’s ...”

“... daunting difficulties, as do the political ramifications: identifying an origin automatically means pointing an accusing finger, and who would accept being stigmatised as the group or nation which gave Aids to the world? And once it became clear that Africa was the continent not just worst, but first ravaged, the problem became all the more sensitive. In ...”

“... a major role in modern Hebrew prose, partly because it is an aestheticised (civilised, liberal) means of choking off the Other’s voice, leaving him or her the right to speak only on condition that the ‘I’ has the final say. Yet, when Oz speaks to himself, about himself, for the first time in his long public career, he sounds more sincere than he ever ...”

“... a powerful critic of the confessional fiscal-military states of 18th-century Europe, Britain by no means excluded. Smith complained of their ‘public prodigality and misconduct’, their ‘expensive and unnecessary wars’, their ‘great fleets and armies’. Nor did he care for the national prejudices which accompanied, and ...”